Bathroom Reno: My Process in Picking Paint and Tiles

Continuing on in my bathroom renovation series; today I thought I would share how I came up with the design of our bathroom including colors and tiles.   

Since we ripped everything out of the bathroom I was able to start from scratch in terms of colors and styles so that was good. Well ... sort of.  I love that I had that freedom but my mind tends to go crazy when I am designing a new space.  I get so many ideas at once and it usually takes me a few days to settle my mind on one.  This one took me a few weeks!   

I was struggling with the idea of keeping true to my character home, but adding some modern touches too.  I love the balance of mixing vintage and rustic pieces with some modern flair.   I wanted a "spa-like" feel to the space so I knew I wanted a green or blue on the walls mixed with lots of clean whites and natural elements.  I knew I wanted the fixtures chrome with curved and rounded edges.  These type of fixtures feel very vintage to me and I love that.   

So - since I knew all of that, at least I could narrow down my choices.  First thing I did was head over to the paint section at my local Home Depot and pulled some swatches of blues and greens.  I found a ton that I liked and brought them all home.  It is so important to do this and look at colors in your own home and light.  A few I liked were definite "no's" when I brought them home!  Some were too blue, green, light, dark, etc ...  I narrowed my choices down to three and taped them to the bathroom wall and left them there for about a week. Throughout that week I moved them around, took one or two down, and finally decided on one.  I picked "Southern Breeze" by Behr and below is a swatch! 

Home Depot started putting little tags next to Behr paint swatches saying "popular colour" and I love that!  Every colour looks different in every home but in a world with so many thousands of swatches its nice be able to narrow down your search that way.  Knowing that this shade by Behr was a popular choice convinced me to take a swatch and I'm so glad I did because it's just perfect!

We went back and forth for a while on tile choices but one thing always remained constant and that was we wanted the shower enclosure to be white subway tile.  This is my absolute favorite type of tile because it is timeless.   The subway tile dates all the way back to 1904 when the NYC Subways were in need of a long lasting and good looking material.  The white, rectangular ceramic tile was chosen for its' durable and stain resistant nature.  These tiles have truly stood the test of time in the design world and I am a huge fan because they are classic and the white will match with anything.  I also love that you can completely change the look of these tiles by using different colored grout!  Although we went with white grout, I do love the look of dark grout with white subway tile.  Because we live in a character home built in 1920, using subway tile brings back a timeless feel to the space in the midst of our added modern elements.  A bonus is that subway tile is usually one of the cheapest options out there! 

                                                     Donald Uhrbrock/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

We decided to build our own shower floor out of tiles rather than use a pre-made shower floor because our space was an odd size.  As pictured in my first bathroom renovation post, we wanted the shower to reach from one wall to the other and the best and cheapest way for us to do this was tiles!  We also prefer the look and again aren't afraid of a little DIY.  We decided to go a little fancier for the floor and picked a small hexagon shaped mosaic tile in a light grey and white marble.  We chose a grey grout with this to give it some character and help keep future cleaning easy! White grout + floor = no thanks!  This is a great way to add a little more luxury to a room because a shower floor doesn't require a huge number of tiles which means it won't totally break the bank!  

Finally for the floor tiles we found a beautiful porcelain that looks like planks of wood. They have no shine to them so we liked how this brought some warmth back into a space surrounded by shiny white tiles and a marble shower floor.  Again, I love the mix of clean whites with something more rustic, distressed or vintage.  These being porcelain is also great for durability rather than having an actual wood floor in the bathroom.   

*we chose the one on the right!

We bought a couple different variations of the tiles and brought them home to look at the colors in the space.  The floor wood-style tiles came in a few shades ranging from light grey to a dark walnut.  We compared these with the white subway tiles, the marble shower floor tiles and the paint swatch.  

We finally settled on what you see below!  

*these photos were taken pre-blog so I apologize for the bad quality ;)

It is so worth it to take your time on these decisions because tiles are so permanent.   I am a huge Nate Berkus fan and I will always remember his advice of choosing simple tiles in neutral colors.  Trends come and go and you can always change the feel of a room with different paint shades or decor items ... but tiles - not so easy!  Sure I would have loved to add a sea-glass mosaic tile to the shower walls as an accent - but knowing me in a year I'll probably be so over the aqua colors and want something different!  If that time comes all I need is some new paint and new towels to transform the space.  If you take anything away from this post, I hope you take your time on your next large project and really compare items and colors until you find your perfect choices!  And try to stick with simple, classic tiles and add fun accents elsewhere!   

Stay tuned for my next bathroom renovation post all about our vanity!